It was a wild week in the world of Android thanks to the fiery controversy over the Galaxy Note7 recall. The company finally issued a formal recall through the CPSC, which will hopefully mean a non-exploding model for you if you’re one of those who opted for Samsung’s latest smartphone. Beyond the Note7 debacle, there were a few other phones that got useful updates.

Each week, we round up all the major software updates to hit the Android ecosystem, including phones and tablets on U.S. carriers, unlocked phones, smartwatches, and Android TV devices. Making sure your device is running the latest available software is a good housekeeping practice, ensuring you have the latest features with fewer bugs and gaping security holes.

Nexus

September security update: After publishing the September security bulletin, the over-the-air update is on its way now to Nexus devices. It even hit my Nexus 7 this week, which was left out of the Nougat party. You can always opt for the factory images if you want to start fresh with your own installation.

Nvidia

Shield Tablet K1: Nvidia is one of the better companies when it comes to consistent updates. The newest of the tablet pair is getting Android Doze optimizations, an audio playback fix, support for the OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics standard, and other bug fixes.

Shield Tablet: It’s pretty much the same story for the older model. The only caveat is the update isn’t quite ready yet for the LTE edition. So check the Nvidia forum for updates.

Android

Android distribution numbers: Nougat may be all the rage for the Nexus faithful, but it hasn’t made a crack in the rest of the Android ecosystem. The evidence comes from the latest numbers from Google, which don’t offer any figures for Nougat (it has to at least reach .1 percent) but do show that Marshmallow has made a modest gain to just under 19 percent.

The September numbers for Android distribution tell a similar tale to August.

OnePlus

OnePlus 3: It’s not a jump to Nougat, but a new community build for the OnePlus 3 brings a lot of features. There’s an ability to kill all background processes, improvements to the dialer, and several other options and fixes. Since this is more of an experimental effort, do expect some hiccups if you try this out.

OnePlus X: The same effort is being undertaken for the OnePlus X. Head over to the OnePlus support page to grab the latest build and give it a test run.

This story, "Android device updates: Nvidia Shield Tablet and K1 get updates, Nexus security patch heads out" was originally published by
Greenbot.